Schools: places where kids go to watch teachers work?

18 Mar Schools: places where kids go to watch teachers work?

Our specialism at Power of 2 is supporting students who struggle to learn maths. Recently we’ve been looking into ‘Hinge questions’, the idea that asking important assessment questions half-way through a lesson can make a major impact on learning.

‘Hinge questions’ stem from the idea that it’s vital to have the foundation blocks of maths in place before you can build upon them. Dylan William, who was behind The Classroom Experiment on BBC2, has researched this area and there’s a great explanation of his thinking here. It’s a long transcript of a speech, but we found it very worthwhile (there’s also an MP3 recording of the talk).

A key point of his is that teachers do not create learning, and yet most teachers behave as if they do. Learners create learning. Teachers create the conditions under which learning can take place. Our schools don’t function like that, which is why somebody once joked that schools are places where kids go to watch teachers work. The article gave us lots of food for thought.

123maths.co.uk and our one-to-one books work on this principle that the basic building blocks are crucial.